BUFFALO, N.Y. — Elevator B, a steel tower that University
at Buffalo students designed and built to house a colony of bees
along Buffalo’s waterfront, continues to receive recognition
from the international architecture community.

The honeycomb-themed dwelling was announced June 13 as the
winner of the Azure
2013 AZ Award for Design Excellence in the category of
“Best Student Work.” Sponsored by the design magazine
Azure, the AZ awards represent a global snapshot of the world of
architecture and design, with submissions from designers,
architects, firms and manufacturers, as well as students of design
and architecture.

The award is the second international recognition for the
project in three months. In March, Elevator B was announced as the
Jury Award winner in the Student Design/Build Project category of
the Architizer A+ Awards.

The bee dwelling is the result of a student design competition
organized by the UB School of Architecture and Planning’s Ecological
Practices Graduate Research Group and sponsored by Rigidized
Metals Corp., a Buffalo-based building material manufacturer. The
goal of the project was to design a habitat for the relocation of a
colony of honeybees occupying a building set to undergo
renovation.

Elevator B's design team consisted of five graduate students in
the School of Architecture and Planning: Courtney Creenan, Kyle
Mastalinski and Daniel Nead, all now graduates of the Master of
Architecture and Master of Urban Planning dual-degree program, and
Scott Selin and Lisa Stern, 2012 graduates of the Master of
Architecture program.

Erected last year in Silo City, a dense cluster of grain
elevators along Buffalo's waterfront, the 22-foot tower is sheathed
in perforated stainless steel panels with a hexagonal “bee
cab” to protect the bees. The bee cab can also be lowered so
that beekeepers can tend to the colony and visitors can observe
them through the cab’s glass bottom.

A colony of bees was relocated to Elevator B from a building set
for renovation in Silo City, a cluster of grain elevators on
Buffalo’s waterfront.

Winners were selected by an international jury of leading
figures in architecture and design, including architects Shirley
Blumberg of Toronto’s Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg and
Todd Saunders of Oslo’s Saunders Architecture; furniture
designer Todd Bracher of New York’s Todd Bracher Studio;
interior designer George Yabu of Yabu Pushelberg (based in Toronto
and New York); New York landscape architect Ken Smith of Workshop;
and visionary Milan-based manufacturer and designer Giulio
Cappellini of Cappellini.